Treasurer Scott Morrison announced $15.2 million for regional study hubs to improve university access and another $24 million for 1200 scholarships helping rural students study maths and science.

The government will also inject $1.5 billion into setting up the permanent "Skilling Australians Fund" focusing on training workers in new skills, as part of its overhaul of temporary foreign worker visas.

It will give $48 million to the Smith Family's Learning for Life program for an extra 24,000 children.

Early learning and child care will receive a $2.5 billion funding boost, including the new system of fee subsidies, and $428 million will go towards a one-year extension to the program guaranteeing 15 hours a week of preschool for four-year-olds.

The majority of the major education measures were previously announced, including a $2.8 billion cut to universities to help pay for $18.6 billion more funding to schools over a decade.

The school funding reform, dubbed "Gonski 2.0", will replace previous deals made by the Labor government with a single needs-based model.

The arrangement will grow public school funding by 94 per cent and non-government schools by 62 per cent over 10 years. But Canberra schools will be hit the hardest by the shuffling of funds between states and sectors.

All of the ACT's Catholic schools and eight independent schools will lose funding, with Daramalan College set to suffer the most.

Meanwhile, universities will be hit with a 2.5 per cent cut through a two-year efficiency dividend, equalling $3 billion over two years. Students will pay 7.5 per cent more for courses by 2021.

Graduates will start paying back loans once they earn $42,000 instead of $51,957, while high-income earners will fork out two per cent more of their income towards HECS repayments.

University student Emily Egan was pleased about the extra support for learning and child care, given she studies early childhood education at the Australian Catholic University.

But the 19-year old had hoped some more good news would soften the pre-empted blow to universities.

"It feels like they have overlooked the long-term impact of what the cuts and fee rises could mean for investing in future generations," Ms Egan said.

"For 16 and 17 year olds looking ahead, making courses more expensive and saying 'by the way, you'll have to pay it back earlier,' is really discouraging.

"The extra funding to childcare and the support for regional students is great, but I wish it could be done without taking from universities."

However, Ms Egan said she was grateful the Coalition abandoned its former proposals to deregulate university fees and cut funding by 20 per cent.